Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In 2010, Peru extracted a total of 170 tons of gold from its mountains and rain forests, the
highest production of that mineral in all of South America. Last year, it produced somewhat
less.Everyyearhasseenadropintheoutput,whichishardlysurprisingsincethereissolittle
of this precious stuff left to dig out. “In all of history,”
National Geographic
reports, “only
161,000 tons of gold have been mined, barely enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming
pools.” More than half of the world's supply has been extracted in the last 50 years. Little
wonder that the price of gold has soared in the past decade; little wonder that multinational
companies have scrambled to wrest it from remote corners of the globe.
LaRinconada's“informal”minesaloneyieldasmuchas10tonsayear—worthupto$460
million on the open market. Even illegal operations are claiming a place in the boom. The
irony is that every niche of this gargantuan industry—from Tiffany's to the mom-and-pop
store—owes Osama bin Laden a debt of gratitude for its rising profits. After the sobering
events of 9/11, when financial markets grew jittery and the dollar began to lose ground, gold
began its meteoric upward spiral. Everyone seemed to want it, especially in the form of jew-
elry, and especially in countries whose populations were clawing their way up toward the
middle class: India and China accounted for the highest demand for gold, their surging num-
bers driving the prices ever skyward. One ounce of gold, which sold for $271 on September
11,2001,nowsellsfor$1,700,awhoppingincreaseof600percent.Thatboomhasprompted
an equivalent explosion in the population crowding into La Rinconada; it is why the num-
ber of inhabitants on that icy, forbidding rock—less than 20,000 in 2007—has doubled and
tripled in the course of five years.
Todaythereare30,000miners workingthefrozentunnels ofMountAnanea, mostofthem
with families, and all in the service of a buoyant global market. There is no legal oversight,
no benevolent employer, no operational government, no functioning police. At least 60,000
souls have pressed into the lawless encampment, building huts on the near-vertical cant of
that dizzying promontory—harboring hope that this may be the day they strike a gleaming
vein, cleave open a wall to find a fist-sized nugget. They think they'll stay only as long as it
takes to find one. There are just enough stories of random fortune to keep the insanity alive.
TheminesatLaRinconadaarecalled“informal,”aeuphemismforillegal,astatuswithout
which Peru's economy would screech to a standstill. For 40 years now, the Peruvian govern-
ment has turned a blind eye to increasingly wretched conditions in this remote community,
itsgovernmentagentsunwillingtoscaletheheights,bravethecold,takecontrol.Intheinter-
im,whatwasoncearegionofcrystallinelakesandleapingfish—repletewithalpaca,vicuña,
chinchilla—has become a Bosch-like world that beggars the imagination. The scrub is gone.
The earth is turned. What you see instead, as you approach that distant glacier, is a lunar
landscape, pitted with rust-pink lakes that reek of cyanide. The waterfowl that were once
abundant in this corridor of the Andes are gone; no birds flap overhead, save an occasion-
al vulture. The odor is overwhelming; it is the rank stench of the end of things: of burning,
